SMOKE POINT PARTNERS IS A FOOD, HOSPITALITY AND PLACE-BASED DEVELOPMENT STUDIO BASED IN MOREHEAD CITY, NORTH CAROLINA.
Founded by Michael Weber and Leah Godfrey, Smoke Point is built from a life-long love affair with food, pressure-tested in restaurants, bakeries, catering kitchens, food halls, retail stores, markets, farms, civic food projects, events, communications, brand development and hospitality work from local kitchens to international food brands.
Leah and Michael believe good food work honours the whole system: the growers, fishers, farmers, bakers, producers and artisans who bring food into being; the restaurants, markets and hospitality teams who shape it into experience; and the people who gather around it, return to it, talk about it and carry it forward.
Smoke Point Partners is our way of bringing our life in food to the place we now call home, working with care, building with discipline, and helping good food businesses grow in ways that feel rooted, generous and built to last.
Pop Vesta
Pop Vesta Markets and Events, the community facing work of Smoke Point Partners, creates markets, events, stalls, supper clubs and community gatherings across Carteret County and coastal North Carolina. This concept grew from years spent living abroad and seeing how good markets can strengthen local economies while also giving people simple, recurring ways to gather, wander, eat, shop and feel more connected to where they live.
Named for Michael’s grandmother, Vesta Davis, Pop Vesta carries forward her warm hospitality: practical, generous, social and rooted in ritual.
Our work begins with what is already here, bringing together local makers, farmers, fishers, artists, bakers, cooks, growers, musicians, small businesses and community groups to create events that feel rooted, useful, beautiful and worth lingering at.
Carteret County Bureau of crushes
Announcing our first Pop Vesta Stall; Carteret County Bureau of Crushes.
For the record, Bureau of Crushes is a fictitious bureau devoted to documenting the people, places, objects, habits, roads, boats, dogs, sandwiches, markets, docks, porches and highly specific local things Carteret County people become quietly devoted to.
Also for the record: we are a lemonade stand.
A real one.
We make fresh crushed lemonade, crushed to order, cold enough to reset your afternoon. Sometimes it is classic lemon. Sometimes peach. Sometimes whatever fruit has started acting like it belongs in the cup.
The Bureau exists to explore, investigate and report on Carteret County Crushes: send us yours!
If you would like Bureau of Crushes at an event, market, fundraiser, neighbourhood gathering, school event, community day, arts thing, porch-adjacent situation or general good idea, reach out, we love showing up!
carteret crush shop
Launching September 2027
